#delete the datasets

[marianarira]

I tried nightshade and glaze with this painting from 2019!

Protect your images from genAI with Glaze! Paintings, photos, 3D renders... everything! Tell your friends!

[nitunio]

I think that if a person knows that something was made using trained on unethically sourced data AI. And still uses it/likes it/supports it/defends it.

Then said person should stop "being mad" when their data is used to train AI without consent.

[demonicsuffrage]

The justice league sees Batman periodically updating a database of his, at the oddest of times, and naturally they think it's got something to do with his contingency plans or a dataset about the Gotham rogues, but in reality it's just him keeping record of his many children's changing tastes

Superman: Woah, he's writing down with such concentration, wonder what could be in there, maybe a new villain in Gotham?

Bruce, writing: "Dick has refused his favourite Pb&J five mornings in a row. Delete from favourites. Ask for new favourite food."

"Jason didn't seem as Eager to read the new book by his favourite author, put it in neutral category."

"Tim chose a green shirt instead of a red one at the mall today. More research needed."

"Cass listened to arctic monkeys on repeat this week. Update to favourites."

"Duke expressed an interest in slam poetry and called band practice lame. Put poetry in favourites and band in neutral."

"Damian watched Bluey for a total of 50 hours this week. Update to favourites."

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

[todays-xkcd]

Focus of your research: EXTREME PETTINESS AND UNWILLINGNESS TO LET ANYTHING GO

Research Account [Explained]

Transcript

[A shot of a webpage entitled "Application for Research Account". The page is cut off the end of a dropdown form asking for the institution, for which the response is "other/none".

Under it is the form "reason for requesting access to our datasets", under which is written "to win an argument with someone in a group chat".]

[The action "select all" is written, followed by the action "delete".]

[The same form, only now with the response "independent research".]

[Cueball sat at a desk, typing on a laptop.]

Caption: I never know how honest to be on these forms.

[theallianceofcelestials]

Update on the AI scrapping situation

I really wish I didn't have to make another post about this, but here we are.

The AO3 dataset, while currently unavaible on the HuggingFace website. has been made into a downloadable, still avaible Torrent file by the person who scrapped AO3

And all the others are avaible here too!

This person scrapped all of these works, whether they be drawings or writings, for AI purposes and to sell them!

The website datafish, the one these are avaible on, is based in Russia, and from what I know it's not responding to DMCAs. Despite all these datasets consisting of stolen work, so far nothing has been done against these!

This was brought to my attention by @mazois in the previous post's comment section, and I've did a little bit of further digging into this, but just know I'm not an expert in this! I'm just another scared person who's work was stolen

This dataset is still downloadable! This can still be downloaded and used by anyone who wishes for it!

Now I really hate doing these tumblr posts, mostly because I shouldn't need to, but also because I kind of feel like I'm bothering people with this, but I just want everyone to have a chance to do something about this.

Right now I don't know if the same approach will work with this one. Even enough DMCAs get filed, maybe something will get done. But I don't know. All I know is that these things are still avaible, even at least one of those that were deleted off of HuggingFace

Now I've tagged the same things as before, with a couple extra added tags, and I'll also link the last post relating to this issue here

Now, while this is a shitty situation, please do not harrass this person! Not because of the whole don't get on their level or whatever, but because it might help them get these datasets back online if they can say they've been harrassed over this! If we want something to get done about this, we must not give this person ground to push back!

Sorry to bother everyone about this again, but I wanted to share this in case someone wanted to know this.

[yourbookcouldbegayer]

PSA: Your AO3 work might have been scraped for a GenAI dataset

(PLEASE NOTE: At this time, access to the dataset has been disabled. You can file a DMCA takedown request if your work is included in the scraped data to campaign for full deletion, but at this time it is considered unnecessary.)

This is intended as a general notification for all the writers following this blog who post on AO3.

Approximately 12.6 million public works were scraped from AO3 and several other published-work sites, including PaperDemon, which has regular updates on the situation as well as resources. Here is the link to their updates.

Affected AO3 users are those whose work IDs were public-facing (that is to say, not locked to registered AO3 users only), and whose work IDs are between 1 and 63,200,000.

Your work ID is the number in your work's site URL, like so:

This work has an ID only in the 61-million range, and so was scraped for the dataset.

If you wish to lock your works to be visible to logged-in users only, you can do so through Works > Edit Works > All > Edit > Only show to registered users.

[drachenmagier]

I wonder if those AI-twats know how rapey they sound when they send me messages like "you should just lean back and relax and let people take what they want. You can't stop it anyway."

Gee, I do wonder why artists don't like ya all.

What an enigma.

aka: having anon asks open is a fucking adventure. <3

Since my most recent post made a few people aware that I might not be a big fan of certain usages of machine learning and image generators, I felt I should make one thing clear. Again. uwu

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:Fuck AI.:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:Fuck NFTs.:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:Fuck people who claim AI regurgitated images are "art".:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:And especially fuck people who tag it as "traditional art" or "artists on tumblr".:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:You are nothing else but scalpers and scammers and I will never support you.:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ:Don't like this? Well, lucky you! This is not an airport and you can leave without having to notify anybody about your departure! The unfollow button is there for a reason! <;3 :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

With love: dra <3

[contemplatingoutlander]

How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data

Curating reality is an old political game, but Trump’s sweeping statistical purges are part of a broader attempt to reinvent “truth.”

Trump appears to be turning the federal government into its own 1984-style Ministry of Truth.

This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall to read it. Below are some excerpts/highlights.

By Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell | March 11, 2025 The Trump administration is deleting taxpayer-funded data — information that Americans use to make sense of the world. In its absence, the president can paint the world as he pleases. We don’t know the full universe of statistics that has gone missing, but the U.S. DOGE Service’s wrecking ball has already left behind a wasteland of 404 pages. All sorts of useful information has disappeared, including data on:

[...]

[See more under the cut.]

Three cases of legerdemath and other tricks up Trump’s sleeve

Deleting data isn’t the only way to manipulate official statistics. Trump and his allies have also misrepresented or altered data. Here are a few examples: 1. Incorrect data

Witness DOGE’s bogus statistics on its supposed government savings. The administration counts as “savings” some canceled contracts that had already been paid in full. Some canceled expenses were created out of whole cloth, such as $50 million supposedly spent on sending condoms to Gaza. 2. Misrepresented data

One of Trump’s favorite charts on immigration is riddled with errors. For one, it does not show the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally, as he claims, but the number of people stopped at the U.S. border. Similarly, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was recently asked how much DOGE funding cuts might reduce economic growth, he suggested that the agency might decide to change how economic growth is calculated so that the usual GDP report strips out government spending altogether. This would be an abrupt change to the standard GDP methodology that has been used around the world for nearly a century, but it would certainly make the DOGE cuts look less painful. 3. Altered data

When data doesn’t tell the story Trump wants, he fabricates it. In what became known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump notoriously altered a map of Hurricane Dorian’s path in 2019.

Likewise, before Jan. 30, a National Institutes of Health website documenting years of spending data included a category called “Workforce Diversity and Outreach.” That line item is now gone — even though the money was, indeed, spent.

Taking cues from authoritarian illusionists

Such actions are straight out of authoritarian leaders’ playbooks. Research suggests that less democratic countries have been more likely to inflate their GDP growth rates and manipulate their covid-19 numbers. Statistical manipulation is also more common in countries that shun economic openness and democracy. [...] To be clear, efforts to rewrite reality via statistical manipulation often don’t work. If anything, China’s data deletions reduced public confidence in the country’s economic stability. (No one hides good news, after all.) The Trump team’s efforts to suppress nettlesome numbers have similarly eroded trust in U.S. data. Only about one-third of Americans trust that most or all of the statistics Trump cites are “reliable and accurate.”

Meanwhile, missing or untrustworthy data lead to worse decisions: Auto companies, for example, draw on dozens of federally administered datasets when devising new car models, how to price them, where to stock and market them and other key choices. Retailers need detailed information about local demographics, weather and modes of transit when deciding where to locate stores. Doctors require up-to-date statistics about disease spread when diagnosing or treating patients. Families look at school test scores and local crime rates when deciding where to move. Politicians use census data when determining funding levels for important government programs.

And of course, voters need good data of all kinds when weighing whether to throw the bums out. Many of us take the existence of economic or public health stats for granted, without even thinking about who maintains them or what happens if they go away. Fortunately, some outside institutions have been saving and archiving endangered federal data. The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, for instance, crawls sites around the internet and has become an invaluable resource for seeing what federal websites used to contain. Other organizations are archiving topic-specific data and research, such as on the environment or reproductive health. These are critical but ultimately insufficient efforts. At best, they can preserve data already published. But they cannot update series already halted or purged.... Some private companies may step in to offer their own substitutes (on prices, for example), but private companies still rely on government statistics to calibrate their own numbers. Much of the most critical information about the state of our union can be collected only by the state itself. Americans might be stuck with whatever Trump chooses to share with us, or not.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Common Dreams:

Climate defenders and farmers sued the Trump administration in federal court on Monday over "the U.S. Department of Agriculture's unlawful purge of climate-related policies, guides, datasets, and resources from its websites."

The complaint was filed in the Southern District of New York by Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY).

The case focuses on just one part of Republican President Donald Trump's sweeping effort to purge the federal government and its resources of anyone or anything that doesn't align with his far-right agenda, including information about the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

"USDA's irrational climate change purge doesn't just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over," Earthjustice associate attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. "USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather, not denying the public access to critical resources."

Specifically, the groups accused the department of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act. As the complaint details, on January 30, "USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee sent an email ordering USDA staff to 'identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change' by 'no later than close of business' on Friday, January 31."

"Within hours, and without any public notice or explanation, USDA purged its websites of vital resources about climate-smart agriculture, forest conservation, climate change adaptation, and investment in clean energy projects in rural America, among many other subjects," the document states. "In doing so, it disabled access to numerous datasets, interactive tools, and essential information about USDA programs and policies."

EWG Midwest director Anne Schechinger explained that "by wiping critical climate resources from the USDA's website, the Trump administration has deliberately stripped farmers and ranchers of the vital tools they need to confront the escalating extreme weather threats like droughts and floods."

[fanfictionlibrary01]

AO3 Data Scraped for AI Training Dataset

What is happening, and what you can do. Check for potential edits with additions at the end of the post!

What is happening? What do we know?

A user going by "nyuuzyou" on the HuggingFace platform uploaded a dataset a few days ago - containing scraped content from AO3. HuggingFace is a very popular platform and widely used for sharing machine learning and AI models/datasets. The scraped dataset includes fics, fanart, and other fanworks - all taken without permission and intended for use in training gen AI models. You can find more information in this Reddit post.

This dataset is one of several compiled from various websites—at least seven in total. While two datasets have been removed, the AO3 one was only disabled on HuggingFace. This means that it’s not downloadable at the moment but still visible. It may also return if takedown efforts end up being challenged/reversed by that user.

Key Details

Scope: On AO3, all content with work IDs between 1 and 63,200,000 has been targeted. The work ID is the number at the end of a work's URL — for example, in https://archiveofourown.org/works/12345678, 12345678 is the work ID. You can find it by simply opening the work and checking the URL in your browser’s address bar. So, if your work falls in that range and is publicly accessible (i.e., not locked and open to everyone, including guests), it’s mostly likely included in the dataset. This dataset is currently disabled on HuggingFace, but that doesn't mean it's gone. It's only a temporary takedown as of now.

Takedown notices have been issued, but this user has also uploaded the dataset to other sites after backlash and partial removal.

There are talks in the discussion forums of potentially moving this dataset to Telegram, torrents, and/or other private channels.

HuggingFace AO3 dataset page

Other distributed sites listed here (as per a Reddit comment)

Currently deleted from ModelScope

What can you do?

Should the dataset return again and you see that your work was affected: file your own DMCA or copyright takedown notice. The uploader, in their own words, "has not agreed to take down the entire repo. At this time, the scraper has agreed with taking down art from the person who owns the copyright. That means each of you will need to request a takedown."

Instructions and a sample CSV template to list your work IDs for removal are provided in this guide. You can find more details in this announcement by PaperDemon.

Lock your works! It would limit visibility to registered users only, and is a very good step to prevent scraping or unauthorized use. To lock all your works on AO3, go to “My Works,” click “Edit Works,” and select all. Then click “Edit” and check the box labeled “Only show to registered users.” Scroll down and click “Update All Works” to apply the change.

⚠️ | Final Notes:

This user has so far shown no signs of stopping and is continuing to redistribute the data across multiple sites, even after numerous takedown requests (read more here). So, we can only recommend to be cautious and beware, lock your works, feel free to make use of takedown notices if you're unfortunately affected, and spread the word to fellow creators.

Follow up on this and get the latest updated in the Fanfic Communities Network (FCN) Discord Server!

If you have more information regarding this - e.g. if works from other sites are affected too - please reach out to us in the FCN!!

Edit (2025-04-26):

The user who has scraped the works has, upon request by another person, posted a way to convert ao3 json to markdown:

https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown/discussions/170

https://gist.github.com/nyuuzyou/b2f83669ad80a22e435728245ebcdf9f

This shows us that nyuuzyou continues to show no signs of taking down the scraped works.

Edit (2025-04-28):

A user warned that even archive-locked AO3 fics were included in a scraped dataset (most likely taken while the scraper was logged in, before they were banned or switched to public-only access). Some public works were missed as well:

https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown/discussions/213#680fcdb76d9e022324a70cf1

Edit (2025-05-03):

Hey everybody, this is a bit late, but the AO3 dataset has been permanently removed from HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown. While this unfortunately doesn’t prevent it from being shared elsewhere (like torrents) nor does it guarantee any deletion of past downloads and whatnot, having it taken down from a major platform like HF is still a significant step forward. (There is more info about other sites on PaperDemon.)

So please don’t be disheartened—every action counts, and this shows that pushing back and filing DMCAs and copyright notices as appropriate does make a difference. We’ll certainly keep an eye out for more info and post updates here, but thank you again to everyone who helped report, spread the word, or supported the effort. Keep reading, keep writing. ���️

[messrmoonyy]

Hi yeah so it’s been hours and I’m still really sad about this actually.

All my fellow fic writing moots pls go and archive lock all your ao3 uploads. Sure we can’t take back what they’ve already stolen but if they go back in or they do it again, at least your work will be safer :(

[interstellar-superdrive]

Everyone listen up! Owen Dennis is deleting the Infinity Train crew blog (infinitytraincrew) because of Tumblr selling people's art to AI datasets.

I want to preserve the art, so I'll be reblogging the posts from that account. REMEMBER TO TURN OFF THIRD-PARTY SHARING IN YOUR BLOG SETTINGS! Also, here's Glaze, which protects your art from AI.

Update: turns out that Glaze does not actually work. please reblog this version instead!

[oceangirl24]

AI Scraping Response from r/AO3 mods

AO3’s Data Was Scraped For AI: What To Know

News/Updates

Hi all—as you may be aware, there’s been an incident regarding the Archive’s data being used to potentially train generative AI.

It seems that a user by the name of nyuuzyou conducted an unauthorized scrape of the Archive, both artwork and writing (as well as at least seven other websites) and uploaded the dataset to the machine-learning website Huggingface. This only scraped publicly available works—archive-locked works do not appear to be a part of that dataset. The works in the set are from as recent as March of this year, and comprise all publicly available works before then.

AO3 is aware of this, and they have filed a DCMA takedown to Huggingface, where the data has been made temporarily unavailable (aka nobody is currently able to use it for training). In response, the uploader filed a counterclaim to try to get it reinstated—though as Huggingface’s Terms of Service don’t allow uploads of any content the uploader doesn’t own the rights to, it’s unlikely that their counterclaim will succeed. However, the user also uploaded the dataset to two more websites after the Huggingface takedown: modelscope and datafish. These two sites are based in China and Russia respectively, places that do not always respond to DCMA takedowns—however, the upload to modelscope does appear to have been taken down/deleted as of writing this. (We also cannot link to these websites as Reddit has them shadowbanned).

The website Paperdemon has more information about the timelines, other websites affected, and how to request a DCMA takedown to Huggingface (which will hopefully not be necessary, but a good resource in case the counterclaim succeeds.)

As scraping like this is unfortunately hard to control, the best option we can recommend as a subreddit is to lock your works to only be available to registered archive users (as they are less likely to be scraped, though this is not foolproof). For readers, if you do not have an account, you will need to make one to be able to view archive-locked works. You can find a link to our most recent invite request thread here, or add your email to the signup waitlist on AO3 to get an invite directly in a few days.

~Cthulu (and the rest of the mod team)

Original post is here.

[nevadancitizen]

i am so pissed, SO PISSED that YET ANOTHER person has come along and scraped ao3 for their generative ai bullshit. every -- not overstating this -- EVERY public work has been processed for HuggingFace and its derivatives. people i know are restricting their works to registered users only and i recommend you do the same so that only registered users can access them. paperdemon, (another site that got scraped -- bless their hearts), has taken up the responsibility of keeping track of the datasets borne of the stolen content. two of the datasets (artgram and itaku) have been deleted, but the others (ao3, artfol, character hub, paintberri, paperdemon art, paperdemon writing) are only temporarily disabled due to the owners of the sites filing a DMCA.

i'm so fucking angry despite the fact that the ao3 people are already in the process of trying to remove it. they stole the work of people i respect, people i take inspiration from, and even MY work. i can't believe it. i have FAR more respect for the shit i took this morning than i ever will for those parasitic lobotomites. but hey -- on the bright side, ziff davis (parent company of IGN, PCMag, Mashable) is suing OpenAI. hopefully when their pockets take a hit, ai jagoffs get the message and stop scraping and let generative ai die

[identityarchitect]

If you use the same email for everything, that email and every account associated with it is probably compromised due to this.

wait what? what exactly does this entail?

Recently, the Internet Archive faced a severe security breach that leaked the account info of all of its users.

Longtime security researcher Troy Hunt, who runs the data-breach-notification website Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) also confirmed that the breach is legitimate. He said it occurred in September and that the stolen trove contains 31 million unique email addresses along with usernames, bcrypt password hashes, and other system data.

(via Wired)

What this means is that the email address and password you used for your Internet Archive account is public information. (You can check Have I Been Pwned to see if your info is a part of this breach, but assume that it is.)

Most people use the same password for most things. Let's imagine you have a pretty secure password, like th1sISap@ssw0rd!!. This follows all the contemporary rules for passwords: it has lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols, and is decently long. So let's say you use this password for your Internet Archive account, and your email address, but your Discord account has a different password.

Someone can look at your leaked info from the Internet Archive and try your password on your email. Now they have access to your email address. That's a very bad thing, since most services online use your email address to confirm that you're who you say you are. Now they can also access your Discord account by sending a password reset request. And Discord account hacks are actually pretty common. Not via these means, for the record: most Discord account hacks take place over Discord itself, usually as a fake link posing as some "oh no I reported you and now you need to contact staff to undo it" (pro tip, if anyone ever says that, they're lying. Social media staff know what misclicks are and also most social media uses an algorithm anyway).

With your Discord account, they can now pose as you - a known legitimate user, who people will want to trust - to try and scam people. Not great. Also, you probably don't want other people to have access to your account.

So, what should you do about it?

Change your email account password. All of your passwords should be unique to that account, but especially email, since it's the 'hub' of logins and if someone has your email they can just send a forgotten password request.

If you have a phone, you can set up two factor authentification. What this means is that you authenticate that you're the owner of the account via one factor, your password, and then an entirely separate factor, your phone. If someone wants to hack something with 2FA, they first need to figure out your username & password, and then guess your 2FA code. Most 2FA codes reset every 30 seconds, so even with brute forcing it's nearly impossible and not worth it.

Stop using the same password for everything! I understand why people do this & there's no shame in it but the more similar your passwords are, the more at risk you are after pwnage. There are plenty of password managers out there: I personally use Bitwarden. Your browser's native password manager is probably fine, but you've got to start taking its suggestions when it wants you to use an ultra-secure password that you'd never be able to remember. Pro tip: You don't need to remember it. The password manager will remember it for you. Bitwarden has a mobile app if you need to login to stuff on your phone, and it also lets you easily carry passwords between computers.

I'd also recommend going through and seeing if you can delete old accounts for websites you no longer use. Having less accounts reduces your risk of being pwned simply because there's less datasets you're in that could be pwned.

I hope this helps ^^; & keep in mind that being pwned is not the end of the world. Even with your info being out there, someone's still got to choose your account of the 31 million that got breached in the Internet Archive leak. Additionally, your accounts might not even be compromised at all - I'm pretty sure I'm fine even though my email was in the leak, since I have a unique password and 2FA for my email, and unique passwords for all my other accounts too.